Steven Madden Ltd. shares fell after the fashion company said tariffs are making it so hard to gauge how its business will perform that it’s not providing an outlook for the rest of the year.
The “continued macroeconomic uncertainty related to the impact of new tariffs on goods imported into the United States” means the shoe retailer “is not providing 2025 financial guidance at this time,” it said in a statement.
The shares dropped 8.9 percent at 9:58 a.m. on Wednesday in New York. The stock had declined 38 percent for the year through Tuesday’s close.
The New York City-based company had already withdrawn its annual outlook in May — also due to tariffs.
Steven Madden faces a particularly daunting task to provide guidance to Wall Street since the company is heavily exposed to China.
Executives told analysts on a Wednesday earnings call that it expects to source around one-third of its US imports for fall 2025 from China, down from 71 percent in 2024. To mitigate higher costs, Steven Madden is raising prices on some items and said department stores and other retailers, as well as consumers, seemed to be accepting those increases without much push back so far.
It reported quarterly revenue and profit that missed the average analyst estimate compiled by Bloomberg.
“We know the path forward will continue to be bumpy in the near-term,” chief executive officer Edward Rosenfeld on the conference call.
Revenue was $556 million, below the estimate of $576 million due to lower-than-expected wholesale revenue. Direct-to-consumer sales, meanwhile, beat Wall Street’s expectations. Adjusted earnings per share came to 20 cents, below the 24-cent consensus estimate.
By Jeannette Neumann
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